


More Permanent than Death

by vinnie2757



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Violence, a mention of sleipnir and lokis children, bar hel because thats a thing apparently, but i watched a god of war lp and remembered that i adored them and now here we are, but you bet im keeping the menagerie for the sake of one (1) joke, i did my best i havent written loki before, listen i love these two i didnt mean to write 12k for them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: ‘One day I will be married, and you won't be able to be late.’‘I'm working on that, but you won't let me kill him.’‘The prince of Asgard does not get to murder his way into a woman's bed, nor she into his.’In which Loki hatches a plan more permanent than death to win his lady love from her betrothed, and it - doesn't quite go to plan.





	More Permanent than Death

**Author's Note:**

> This started as PWP, and ended up 12k of ridiculousness. Enjoy my lovelies!

Her door was locked, but not for long, and he double-checks the corridor both ways before slipping through the door and closing it behind him. Another wave of his fingers and the lock is back in place, with an extra seal for luck.

A deep breath, two, and he slinks through the sitting room into the bedroom, where Sigyn lies asleep, sprawled across the bed with her hair a tangled mess and her limbs crooked. For a moment, he stands there and just watches her, half listening to the midnight sounds of the palace, and then he creeps across the rug to kneel next to her, fingertips stroking across her cheekbone.

She used to snap awake, hands flying to break his nose, but now she flutters her eyelashes, sees him, and smiles slow.

‘Hello,’ she breathes. ‘You're late.’

‘Sorry,’ Loki whispers, and eases himself onto the bed so that he can lie flush with her, noses brushing.

She smells sleep-warm and her existence is soft, soft muscles, soft breath, soft expression. Her eyes are dark in the low light of the room, but they watch his eyes, and her hand wriggles between them to rest on his hip, thumb pushing under his tunic to rub his skin.

‘An apology?’ she coos, with a lazy smile. ‘I wonder what terrible thing you did.’

He bumps noses and they find each other’s mouths, slow and easy, all pillowed lips and languid tongue. She sighs into his mouth, her fingers kneading at his hip. He drags his fingertips down her arm, as low on her thigh as he can reach, back up to her jaw, holding it gently, getting the best kiss out of her that he can.

‘I've done many terrible things,’ he whispers, and rolls her onto her back, propping himself on an elbow to look down at her, watching her sleep-heavy eyes watching him.

‘Not getting here before I fell asleep is the most terrible of all.’

‘Indeed, I shall have to make it up to you.’

She snorts, and runs her fingers through his hair.

‘One day I will be married,’ she tells him, her leg curling to rest across the back of his thigh. ‘And you won't be able to be late.’

‘I'm working on that,’ he breathes, ducking his mouth to her jaw, her throat, making her sigh. ‘But you won't let me kill him.’

‘The prince of Asgard does not get to murder his way into a woman's bed, nor she into his.’

He grins, wild, against her collar bone, and nips the soft flesh there. She gasps, sighs, and her fingers knot into his hair.

‘I don't believe there was any murder regarding either of our beds, unless there's something you're not telling me.’

She giggles, and her leg bends, foot pressing into his backside, something fonder, and warmer, than the kick she'd have levelled against it were they standing and lit by the sun.

How people haven't been waiting outside her chambers for any sign of infidelity, for the evidence of their - friendship - he doesn't know. But nobody seems to have noticed that dearest Sigyn, jewel of the Vanaheim delegation, had him in the palm of her hand. The eye of Loki's storm, it all centred on her, leaving her at the untouched epicentre of his whirlwind trickery.

He lets the pressure of her toes sway him upwards, and the kiss he bestows on her lips this time is sloppier, a hotter, wetter affair that drags a sweet little moan from the back of her throat. Her hands rove his hair and shoulders, rest on his chest to feel his heart beating her rhythm before rolling her shoulder to get her hand between his legs.

‘Cheeky,’ he coos, pressing the word into the arching column of her throat.

‘My middle name,’ she coos back, ‘and you were late, I've got to make up for lost time.’

The guilt rolls across his gut for half a breath, and then he's pushing up into her hand, eyes falling shut as his brow drops onto hers. Her fingers are soft and dry, lotioned and powdered and untouched by fighting. She does not belong amongst the Asgardian masses, and her foolish betrothed, a man of more muscle than brain, he is not the one for her.

‘You know,’ he huffs, doing his best to keep his head as she works at making him lose it, ‘I could force him to step down by proposing myself. My proposal would outrank his.’

‘Marriage does not work like that,’ she snorts, and brushes the tip of her finger in a circle along the ridge of his cock. ‘You can't just outbid him. I'm not a prize to be won.’

He'd disagree, vehemently so, but he's too busy biting back moans. He's trying to think, to remember the words for a spell to let them be loud without being heard. But he can't remember, can't think.

‘Fuck, Sigyn,’ he sighs.

‘Maybe,’ she grins, biting her mirth into his throat. ‘You do owe me.’

She's loving the power over him, and he doesn't blame her. Whenever he gets her to come undone under his fingers, his mouth, his cock, it's a power trip, a thrill he doesn't know how to live without. That she will marry, if he doesn’t find a way to stop it first, that he might have to give this up -

He shudders, for the thought and for the way her fingers are feather-light against his skin, her heel digging into the crease of his thigh, keeping him close as her mouth works against his. It doesn’t bear thinking about, and he shan’t ruin his evening by dwelling on it.

‘I don’t want you to marry him,’ he says, and the earnest nature of it makes him sick to his back teeth.

‘Then you’ll have to speak to your father,’ she hums, and rolls him over, finally, onto his back, crawling into his lap.

‘I’m not naked,’ he says, and she settles against him, for just a moment, feeling the weight of him between her legs as she studies his face.

He’s an open book to her, when he’s not determined to not be an open book. A few deep breaths as they watch each other, gulping, gasping breaths like he’s drowning, because he is, he’s always drowning in her, she’s an ocean of things he had never considered until she did as all loves do, and existed on his periphery in a way that made him stop and take stock. She’d been reading a book in the gardens, one loaned to her by one of the handmaidens, and she’d been utterly absorbed in it, blonde hair tumbling against her shoulders, down her back, a strand caught on her lip in the summer breeze. It was the raising of her hand that made him pause, and he’d watched her pull the strand of hair away from her face, tuck it behind her ear, turn a page. His head had cocked slightly, something like contemplation behind his eyes, and then he’d carried on, off to wreak havoc in the way he always wreaked havoc.

Then he’d grown bored and gone to find her still in her chair and still reading, and he’d transformed into a snake and curled about her ankle, hanging loose and free.

‘I must be in some very serious trouble,’ she’d said, idly, lifting her leg to look at him in the eye, ‘if my Lady has sent her son to collect me. Am I so terribly late, my Prince? I didn’t think much time had passed.’

He’d transformed back to his usual towering self, ready to spook her, but she’d beaten him to the punch, kicking him in the behind and hiking her skirts, sprinting across the gardens and up the steps before he’d registered quite what happened.

To be honest, he’d been done for from that moment. She’d been so quick to react to him in a way he had not expected - the sheer gall of it! - but it had been refreshing, enticing, and he’d sought her out after dinner, and found her company delightful. Her face open and honest and her demeanour so calm and without judgement, and he’d found himself talking, actually talking and not just playing games with his words. She’d listened, and he’d found a lump in his throat when he asked her to dinner.

‘We’ve eaten, my Prince,’ she’d said, with a smile on her face that was too innocent to be unaware of what he was asking, but her fingers had been warm in his when she’d taken the hand he offered.

Her fingers now, working on his breeches, pulling them down to his knees, shoving his tunic up to his armpits, bring him out of the reverie.

‘Do you remember?’ he asks, as she kisses a line down his sternum, the dip of his abdomen, his belly and the cradle of his hips. She pauses, turns her head to rest her cheek against his thigh, and his hand finds her hair, massages his fingers across her scalp.

‘I remember many things,’ she says, and her eyelashes flutter as he finds the weak spot in her composure; a small section of scalp just to the left of the end of her parting, on the crown of her head. It made her weak in the knees, but playing with her hair did that.

‘When we first met,’ he says, ‘you were so calm, and I asked you to dinner.’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘you were not the first man to ask me to dinner.’

‘Was I the first you accepted?’

She snorts, and reminds him of the way she’d laughed at seeing him naked for the first time, the way she’d pointed at him and told him outright that there was no way he’d fit. Not because he was particularly well-endowed - he was perfectly average, in that department, and found it perfectly acceptable to be so - but because she was naive and uneducated, and hadn’t thought through what she’d agreed to quite enough to know he wasn’t just going to force the, ahem, issue.

He sniffs, and goes to make a comment when she presses her mouth to his dick, and his words are swallowed at the same time as his tongue.

He curses from between his teeth, hissing it out in one breath and he doesn't beg, because Loki is not a begging type, but by the Nine, he would beg for her.

Sigyn is not a cruel mistress - fun, and full of mischief, and a world-ender in her beauty and grace, but not cruel.

She still pulls off him just as his toes begin to curl and his breath hitches up an octave.

‘My darling,’ he breathes, with a tone that on a lesser man might be called pleading.

She puts a finger on his lips, and straightens up, yanks his breeches off in one pull of her arms. He grins, and sits up, pulls his tunic over his head, tosses it into the same forgotten corner as his breeches, and her nightgown is quick to follow.

Blessedly naked, lit by the flickering moonlight, caught between clouds and midsummer rain, she takes his outstretched hands, eases herself back into his lap.

‘Would that I could,’ he breathes, stroking her face with both hands, just admiring the view of her before him, naked and silvery, tousled and swollen mouthed.

‘Could that you would,’ she replies, and leans in for the softest pillowing of lips, too soft and too gentle, and the guilt gnaws at his belly again.

‘Not without murder,’ he reminds her, ‘and you strictly forbade that.’

‘He doesn't deserve to die. Not yet, anyway.’

He snorts.

‘Well,’ she hums, wriggling her hips a little, and sighing when he fits inside her just the way he belongs. ‘You never know. He may do something to warrant death, but he is too sweet and too without - he is not a cunning man.’

Loki is always listening to the woman he'd marry, if he could. He's listening to her even when he's resolving not to. But he can only hear the thrum of her heart, the rush of her breath against his face, the quiver and tremble of her muscles.

‘Yes,’ he says, because she's waiting for a reaction.

It must not match what she said, because she's laughing, and kissing him, and oh how he misses this when he has to sit across from her in the hall and pretend like he doesn’t want to jump over it and flatten her to the floor.

He'll leave bruises that take longer than not at all to heal, dot her hips and thighs with his fingerprints, freckle her neck and shoulders with his teeth, and each rock of her hips will make them both gasp and sigh. She's learned to be quiet, a shamed knock at her door, a maid checking on her sobbing bringing with it a sense of urgency that he loathes.

They have all night, as long as they're quiet, but quiet is not a word he wants in his bed. Well, her bed. But the point stands.

He loves her up there, he does, loves the curtain of hair shielding them from the world, but the smile on her face is killing him, teasing him into action.

A buck of his hips, a hand across her back, and he's rolling them, a scramble for balance before they settle. She laughs, delighted, and ruffles his hair. It isn't long enough to curtain them the way hers does, but it tickles her ears when he drops his head to kiss her, all teeth and tongue and the knock of noses as she pushes back against him.

‘Shit,’ he breathes, and it's as uncouth as he's going to get. He'd say ruder things, if he was a different man, he'd use the bawdy language he's heard in taverns and city streets and the training field, but he thinks he's encompassed enough feeling in the single syllable.

‘Rude,’ she breathes back, and whines in that way she has when she has to be quiet against all instinct.

‘Charming,’ he corrects with a snort.

A particular roll of his hips has her gasping his name, and her fingers claw deep into his back, holding on for dear life. He hooks an elbow under her knee, bends her leg back to her shoulder and braces himself to - ahem - fuck her silly.

It's almost a game now, trying to get them caught. This isn't to say that Loki doesn't heartily enjoy the secrecy of it, secrets are his favourite thing. But there's something about watching Sigyn try to keep her composure while she's being  lavished with sexual affection is hilarious.

‘And,’ she gasps, apropos of nothing, because this is just the kind of person Sigyn is, ‘it wouldn’t serve you to kill him anyway.’

Loki grunts, his face buried in her neck. Her fingers run up and down his back, her nails scratching at the skin until it itches.

‘Do you think anyone knows?’ she asks, ‘Theoric doesn’t have the faintest clue that I am - not interested, in his company. But he’s besotted.’

‘Most men are,’ Loki replies, low.

He’s not jealous of the way most men look at Sigyn, but he’s a little bit jealous of how they can stare openly, how they can salivate at the sight of her back when she wears that one evening dress. Loki takes some small measure of pride and self-aware horror of the fact that he does not need the dip of her spine to feel heat curl in his gut, just the hint of thigh through the split in that other one dress of hers is enough. Hell, she could wear a dress more modest than his mother’s prized necklines, and her shoulders would be enough. It is a weakness he knows he cannot afford, but a weakness he is unwilling to give up. She is really very pretty, and she’s even prettier when she’s naked and tightening about his cock in what he knows is deliberate chastisement for being jealous.

‘Most men are allowed to look,’ she says, nose turned up. ‘I have no interest in them, and barely notice.’

Barely, because sometimes, just on the odd occasion, she’s inclined to whirl on them and give them reason to look away. He is fiercely protective of the pride such rebuttals awaken in him, but being unable to acknowledge it publicly, despite Thor’s knowing looks at his snorts of laughter into his carefully placed wine glass, wounds him tremendously. He’s been stabbed, and it’s hurt less than not being able to holler from the rooftops that this magnificent creature, this lovely, impossibly wonderful woman, is his.

‘Thor,’ he says, because she’ll just keep going if he doesn’t answer, and as much as he wants this to last forever, he doesn’t particularly want to devote more thought to anything else than absolutely necessary.

‘Thor knows?’ she asks, and shudders at a particularly deep thrust. ‘You don’t have to be jealous, he’s not you.’

‘I’m not jealous.’

‘That’s why you’re trying to dislocate my thighs,’ she snorts, and has to slap a hand to her mouth when he bends her other leg back to get a whole new angle, forcing a cry out of her before she can stop herself.

‘Stop teasing,’ she chokes out, ‘and be nice. I won’t be able to walk tomorrow.’

‘Good,’ he chokes back, and has to let go of her knees to brace himself on his hands so he can kiss her.

The feel of her thighs against his belly, her calves against his shoulders, is so - so -

‘I’ll find a way to marry you,’ he says, and holds her lip between his teeth for a thrust or two, swallowing her choked cries for his own. ‘Never letting you go.’

‘I’d get very sore,’ she teases, and her hands knot into his hair. ‘I’m yours, my Prince. I’m not going anywhere.’

It is a loyalty he would toss aside coming from anyone else. But Sigyn is different, in a way he doesn’t know how to describe. Sometimes he sees Thor watching Sif, when she’s not looking, and he wonders if maybe his brother knows that trust too.

They don’t talk much after that; they don’t need to. Most of what they could say has been said before, and they have better things to occupy their mouths with, especially with regard to the noises coming out of Sigyn’s. By the Nine, how Loki finds himself longing - at the worst possible times, usually - to be able to hear her really let it all out, all the screaming and crying and moaning, all the gasps and sighs and groans. Maybe one day, but he will have to find a way to remove that fiancé of hers from the equation before he does so.

She falls asleep first, as is usually the way; Loki is a creature of mischief, and mischief does not sleep. But he _had_ woken her for this little tryst, and he does not judge her for curling into his side and evening her breath, her fingers resting gentle and warm against the cool sweat of his sternum. He lies there, watching her for long enough that he can feel his eyelids beginning to weigh him down, and she blurs in the low moonlight, a sliver of flesh and blonde hair and radiance, and he shakes himself awake, gently removing her hand to rise.

‘Mm, is it time for you to go?’ she asks, and Loki sits back on the edge of the bed, looking at her blinking slow, barely able to keep her eyes open this time.

‘Unfortunately so,’ he nods, and leans down to kiss her temple. ‘Sleep, my love, and dream of a better time.’

‘No better time than with you,’ she replies, and her next exhale is long, petering out back into a sleeping rhythm that soothes his bones. If she’s asleep, she’s safe.

And he’s flushing a little, high in his ears, and he hates that she’s so – so _loyal_ to him, so in love with him, even though he himself is devoted to her in a way he’s never been devoted to a single thing.

He dresses silently, watching her all the while, and returns to the bed to stroke a lock of hair from her face, kissing her temple and her cheek and the corner of her mouth before rocking onto his toes and creeping from her bedchamber and back into the corridor. As soon as he’s clear of her door, he saunters, the way he always saunters, even though he’s holding his boots in his hand, like the criminal lover he’s become, and not even one of the maids is around to look at him. He could just magic himself back to normal, leave no trace of Sigyn or his mischief-making on his form, but something about doing it the old-fashioned way, it gives him a thrill. He could get caught, and part of him wants to be. Let him be _honest_ for the first time in his miserable life.

It doesn’t take him long to return to his bedchambers, and he falls into his bed, and misses the warmth of Sigyn beside him. He’s tired without feeling sleepy, which is common, his default, and after a half-hour of lying there longing to feel her breath on his shoulder, her hand on his belly, the rise and fall of her chest shifting the sheets around him, he hauls back onto his feet and heads, instead this time, to the stables.

Sleipnir’s head appears over the top of his gate as Loki shuts the main doors behind him, and Loki smiles.

‘Hello, old boy,’ he says, because the horse is old enough now to be considered old.

He bumps their faces together, and stands there, just bracing his brow and nose against Sleipnir’s face, and the horse returns the favour, letting his – well, technicalities were always confusing. Either way, Loki is comfortable to just be around the horse for five minutes, and the horse is content to have Loki close to him. Thor remains insufferable about the whole thing, and Loki ignores him for the most part. He did what he had to do, and Sleipnir was a worthy repercussion for the actions.

‘Your grandmother’s face when I told her where I’d been,’ he snorts, and Sleipnir snorts back.

If Odin wouldn’t have his hide, Loki would break his child, his foal, out of the stable and let him loose in the wild. It’s no more risky than letting his other children loose in the wild, but Odin had made his point about it, and so Sleipnir remains.

Sigyn had laughed herself sick when Loki told her of the situation.

‘So I am to be step-mother to a menagerie?’ she’d asked, tears wobbling on her lashline, full and glittering with the mirth of her voice. ‘A snake, a wolf and a horse. What next, my Prince? Birds, perhaps. I wouldn’t wish to sit atop the nest, but I would keep them safe in my bed.’

He’d given her such a look at her teasing, and finally the tears had fallen.

Sleipnir approves of his parent’s choice of not-quite-bride, though, will let Sigyn sneak him sugar cubes when nobody else is looking, and she gives him kisses all across his face any time Loki sneaks her into the royal stables to visit, which is not as often as it should be.

‘I can’t stay,’ he whispers, ‘the guards will be back soon. I just wanted to say hello.’

He feels like the whinny the horse gives him is a hello in return, but Sleipnir’s magic does not extend as far as language.

There is still no sleepiness to his tiredness when he returns to his bedchambers this time, but he forces himself to lie there, feeling a little more contented for having seen his child, and allows himself to drift.

And if he dreams of a little boy – a boy, a human boy, with his mother’s eyes and his hair and nose, well. That’s his business. It won’t come to pass without a ring on Sigyn’s finger all the same.

And that won’t come without getting rid of her odious fiancé.

It is a cruel misnomer, of course, for Theoric is not a cruel or particularly odious man. He smells, to be sure, sweat and leather and gilded armour, for he is a Crimson Hawk, and that is a valuable station in itself, perfectly fine for someone as fine as Sigyn. But Loki is not interested in the defence of the man, in the way all men are not interested in the virtues of their competition.

He would enlist Thor in his schemes, because Thor is, despite his protestations about Loki’s mischief, quite fond of mischief himself, and he is fond of Sigyn. She is the sister he does not yet have, and he would be happy to help Loki achieve the one piece of happiness that could solely belong to him. But Sigyn has said no to murder, and he does not want to start their marriage by lying to her.

So how, then, to remove Theoric from the equation? He needs to sleep on it, he reasons, get a clear, bright-eyed head on his shoulders, and consider deeper the possibilities.

Thor himself comes to wake Loki in the morning, kicking the door open and hollering his brother’s name, in that way only Thor will ever get away with being loud as anything.

‘Brother!’ he says, which is more of a bellow than a talk, but that is just Thor’s way. ‘You missed breakfast, Mother is worried.’

Loki grunts into his pillows, and after a minute of silence passes, raises his head. Thor is prodding and poking about Loki’s desk and bookcase. Why, he doesn’t know, Thor doesn’t read willingly, but he’s poking around the least harmful things, which is something. He’s learned his lesson about rooting in drawers, at least.

‘I’ll go and see her,’ Loki promises, and Thor grunts out an acknowledgement.

‘How is Sigyn?’ he asks, slow, like he knows it’s a risk.

‘She’s well, last I saw of her,’ Loki says. ‘We do not have occasion to speak very often. Her studies keep her busy.’

 ‘Mm,’ Thor says, and leafs through an old tome. Poetry, Loki thinks, one of their mother’s latest efforts into quelling her second son’s dramatic tendencies.

All it’s really done is make him a romantic with his besotted affections. But she wouldn’t know that, and he has no intention of telling her.

Cracking his neck, Loki rolls to his feet and pads over to his brother to take the book from his hands, trying not to be obvious about tucking the bookmark of one particular poem back into place. Thor’s eyes are on his hands, though, and Loki doesn’t know why he bothers.

‘What are you really here for?’ Loki asks, ‘you don’t barge into my chambers without reason.’

 Thor’s mouth wrinkles for a moment, and then he gathers himself, shoulders back and chin up. They’re the same height, but he likes to try and look bigger.

‘Whatever you are planning, I want to be a part of it.’

‘Why do you assume I’m planning something?’ Loki asks, slotting the book back onto the shelf, and ignores the droll look Thor gives the back of his messy head.

‘You’re always planning something, brother, and I saw you sneaking last night. It does not prove difficult to imagine where you were.’

‘I was nowhere,’ Loki defends, automatically, ‘can a man not sneak if he so desires?’

Thor’s head cocks to the side, looking for half a moment so like their mother that Loki almost feels chastised for trying to weasel his way out of it so half-heartedly.

‘I will bathe, and dress, and go and see Mother,’ Loki says, ‘and we will not discuss this.’

‘You can trust me, Loki,’ Thor says, ‘I will not give your secret away.’

‘I have no secrets,’ Loki tells him, and waves a hand at his brother, ushering him back towards the doors.

* * *

 

Frigga is giving him the same droll look when he walks through the gate into her garden.

‘Mother,’ he says, and bends at the hip to kiss both her cheeks.

She catches his face before he straightens, and kisses between his eyes.

‘Loki,’ she greets, gentle and soft as ever, ‘do take a seat, I missed you at breakfast.’

‘I’m afraid I slept in,’ he explains, sweeping his coat to the side to sit beside her on the bench. ‘I shall endeavour to wake early tomorrow.’

Her eyes are sharp, her smile half-hidden behind the feigned dourness.

‘I do hope you are not coming down with anything too horrid. You’ve been such a help to me lately, and it would be a shame to lose your assistance.’

‘I’ve barely been any,’ he protests, because Frigga has been trying to make him calm and collected and a gentleman to boot, but mischief is his middle name, and he does not have the patience to teach the girls his mother is tutoring in incantations and tricks of the eye.

‘You’ve been plenty to Lady Sigyn,’ his mother says, ‘only yesterday, she was telling me she wished to never set eyes on you again for as long as she lived after the trick you played on her.’

‘Is that so?’ Loki asks.

Sigyn has told him to his face that she would never marry him if he were the last of the Asgardians, and that she could not be paid enough in treasure or pittance to wed him. She’d also told him as such between kisses, clutching at his coat as he did his best to get purchase on her dress’s lacings to get it undone, so he doesn’t put much stock in it.

‘Mm,’ his mother says, so like Thor that it’s clear where he got it from. ‘She seems very fond of you, I do hope you don’t do something rash.’

There’s a quip about _getting_ a rash on his tongue, but he keeps it to himself. Some jokes are not ones you share with your mother, no matter how wicked her sense of humour. Instead, he assures her that he has no designs on the girl, and no desire to make more mischief than necessary.

‘Your father will expect you to marry eventually,’ Frigga says, and Loki shakes his head.

‘Thor is the priority, Mother,’ he tells her, with that same genial smile that hides everything he doesn’t want seen. ‘As loathe as I am to admit it, his marriage is the important one. Political alliances and all that, his match needs to be advantageous and with prestige. I could have married Angrboda if I wished, but I do not wish to marry.’

Well, he wishes to marry one woman very much indeed, but that, for now, with gritted teeth, is out of the question.

Frigga’s lips purse, but then she shakes her head. ‘Have you spoken with her recently? Or my grandchildren?’

He gives her a bitter look. ‘You know full well that I have not, at Father’s demands.’

 She sighs. She has not been exactly _proud_ of Loki’s nonsense, what with his carrying on with the giantess, and then the _horse_ of all things, but they are her blood, technically speaking, and she loves them all the same. Even if they are a snake, a wolf, and a horse. She feels like there is something missing from the equation, but she cannot put her finger on it, and so it is not discussed.

He suffers enough from his father’s demands on his children, without upsetting the balance further.

‘Is it – bad,’ she starts, and looks at him askance, ‘that I might wish you to have – a _child_.’

‘A fleshy little goblin, you mean,’ he says, because Asgardian children, with their fleshy limbs and round faces and button noses are all very much goblins.

‘Don’t call them goblins, Loki, I raised you with more manners than none. But yes.’

‘That would require me to marry a woman, Mother, who is also fleshy and willing to have a _child_.’ He places the same emphasis on it that she does. ‘And no Asgardian of high enough birth will come near me.’

‘What about a Vanir?’

The look in her eye is not one of foolish naivety, and he hates her for it.

But then, he supposes he had wanted to be caught, to be _honest_. But he cannot stop the nonsense from coming out of his mouth, fond as he is of misdirection and silliness.

‘Mother, Lady Sigyn has already told me to my face that she would never marry me, do not attempt to dissuade her from her common sense.’

‘She would be good for you, I think, a calm to your storm.’

‘I prefer to think of myself as a whirlwind.’

‘The eye of it, then,’ his mother retorts, as childish as he is, given half the chance. ‘Either way, she is peaceful, and kind, and patient, and many things you are not. She would serve you well as a friend. Do try to be nice to her.’

‘Mother,’ Loki starts, and then sighs. ‘I am fond of her, in turn, I admit. But fondness does not an engagement break.’ He takes a breath and then adds, ‘especially not after you yourself told me not to do something rash.’

‘I meant killing him.’

‘Killing him would solve so many more problems than it would cause!’ he explodes, hands flying into the air and leaping to his feet to pace. ‘She has told me no, and that has – _trapped_ – me, Mother. I must now keep this man, this enemy of mine, alive, lest his death be pinned on me. I would not be a good husband to serve the first century of my marriage behind bars.’

He is such a boy, his mother thinks, looking at him with a fondness she has only ever had for him. He is a great deal many regretful things, but he is her son, and she adores him.

‘A wise man once told me that all roads lead to Rome.’

‘Where is Rome?’ Loki asks, and Frigga shrugs, daintily, though her expression of glib ignorance is not so dainty, all twisted mouth and folded chin.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ she admits, ‘but I am fonder of walking than I am of skinning cats. There is more than one solution to your problem, my son, and you need to see past the easy route to better utilise your talents.’

She emphasises it, gives him a _look_ , and he stares at her. Is she giving him blanket permission to be as mischievous and as putrid as possible, because she has very rarely given him leave to do as he wished, even though he often does so anyway.

‘I love you,’ he tells her, because you should always say such things to your mother.

Her smile is soft, and her hand softer on his cheek.

‘And I love you, my darling son. You should eat, you’re looking thin in the cheeks again.’

Again, filth about the things he _has_ been eating is on the tip of his tongue, but he keeps his secrets to himself, and nods, assures her he will visit the kitchen, and then he retreats from the gardens, fingertips fiddling as he thinks.

* * *

 

He sneaks back to Sigyn that night, and she’s brushing her hair when he slips through the door, looking radiantly sleepy.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he says by way of greeting, and she smiles at him in the angled mirror.

‘You’re tired,’ she replies, ‘perhaps a quiet evening, my Prince.’

‘Perhaps,’ he nods, shrugging out of his coat.

They make idle chatter as he waits for her to finish her routine, pressing kisses to her lips and hands as she passes him sitting in the armchair by her fireplace. She’s beautiful, and he longs to see this routine every evening. It is unlikely, he admits, that he will be king, but she is a queen, to be sure, and he feels she deserves a throne, a court, a gaggle of devoted maidens to attend her every whim.

‘Tell me,’ she says, and he hums. ‘Your mother was asking after you during my tutelage today. She seems to be under the impression that we are fond of each other.’

‘Whoever would have told her something so horrid,’ he snorts, and rests his head back to stare at the ceiling.

‘I told her that I am no fonder of you than I am of frogs, and I loathe them.’

He smiles at her. She is a terrible actress, no better than a child, but her honesty is overwhelmingly refreshing.

‘I wonder where she got that impression indeed.’

‘I think perhaps she might intend to speak to Theoric, but it will be in vain. He will not relinquish my hand.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ she sighs, and helps herself to a seat in his lap.

His hands close automatically around her hip, and she rests her head on his shoulder. Her blonde hair, braided thickly down her back, smells of soft fruit and clean soap, and is silk against his jaw when he rests his head atop hers.

‘A shame.’

‘I asked him,’ she says, ‘if there were any circumstance in which the wedding might be called off. Out of curiosity, you understand, because I plan for all eventualities, and I fed him some line about preparations being movable, should such a circumstance arise, and he said not even Ragnarok could stop him from marrying me. He is awfully fond of me.’

‘Too fond,’ Loki sighs, and kisses her hair, ‘even I am not fool enough to say nothing would stop our wedding.’

‘Our wedding,’ she hums, and turns her head to kiss the long line of his throat, ‘I like the sound of that. Perhaps one day.’

‘Soon,’ he promises.

They stay sitting together, fingers soft against bare skin for several minutes, and then Sigyn yawns.

‘Might you read to me, my Prince?’ she asks, ‘if you are willing.’

‘Always,’ he breathes, and with a wave of his hand, the book of poetry appears atop his palm. ‘Let us retire.’

She leads him by the hand to her bed, and he strips before climbing in beside her. Her head finds his chest, the edge of the book finds her shoulder to use as a stand, and his voice is low, quiet, as he reads to her, the words flowing off his tongue like water in a stream, and soon her breathing is even, and he is speaking to a sleeping room.

He licks his teeth, stares into space, and thinks and thinks and thinks. Finally, he eases out from beneath her, settling her into her favoured sleeping position, remaining for a minute more to see if she stirs, and when she does not, he dresses, kisses her temple, and leaves.

Instead of sneaking straight back to his chambers, playing the fool as ever, he puts his boots on, straightens his shoulders, and saunters down to the hall, where his brother and the sigh-inducingly dull Warriors Three he calls friends will no doubt be drinking and singing and hollering.

‘Thor!’ he calls, arm raising to get his brother’s attention.

‘Loki!’ Thor calls back, raising his tankard. ‘Come, join us!’

Loki slides onto the bench, and grabs his brother’s wrist. ‘I need your help. I have a plan.’

‘A plan,’ Hogunn drones, sarcastic, ‘sure to end well.’

But Thor’s brain is moving, and then his head is joining it, nodding slowly.

‘I understand,’ he says, ‘it will – have to wait until the morning.’

‘Certainly,’ Loki says, ‘but you will need your wits.’

Thor looks at his tankard, half-empty, and downs it in one. ‘I will have to retreat, my friends, my brother has need of my help come the morn, and I would not leave him without it.’

The Warriors Three call Loki names for stealing their drinking buddy from them as he shepherds his brother away from the hall and towards his chamber, but Thor is blinking his way through the mead, and finally nods.

‘You will not kill him?’

‘No. I have something more – permanent, planned.’

‘What is more permanent than death?’ Thor asks, and Loki is not the person to ask, considering he has been faking his death routinely for the last few centuries, every time something mildly inconvenient happens to him.

Loki just smiles, the slow and too-toothy smile he smiles when he’s up to something. Thor does not trust that smile as far as he can throw it, but he smiles back all the same.

‘You will not kill him,’ he repeats, for confirmation.

‘No,’ Loki assures him, and ushers him through the door to his chambers. The maid inside is sat in the chair by the fire, reading a book and leaps to her feet when the Prince stumbles in. ‘Take care of him please, Grete. He has been at the mead again.’

The girl flushes; Frigga has ensured her boys treat the palace staff with dignity and respect and a familiarity bestowed upon friends, not staff, but it is not often they use shortened names instead of full ones. The maids as a whole are not sure of Loki’s familiarity, of his gentle friendliness. He has a tendency to get the male servants into trouble with their seniors, but he is gentle with the girls, and they are unable to place the source of his nicety. Many fingers have been pointed at Lady Sigyn, but there is no proof to any claim they might make.

‘Yes, sir,’ she says, tucking one foot back to dip her knees in a curtsey, before stepping forwards to guide Thor through the door proper.

Loki ducks his chin in a polite nod, and shuts the door, whistling as he strolls off down the corridor to his own chambers. Yes, something more permanent than death, that was his plan.

* * *

 

Sigyn eyeballs him across the Great Hall at breakfast, because she recognises him far better than anybody else, and she doesn’t trust him as far as she can throw him. But he ignores her, only glancing at her once to find her staring, and she flushes at getting caught, ducks her head back into her fruit and pretends like she hasn’t seen him. She’s radiant as always, her neckline high and lacy, her shoulders bared but her arms covered, and he wonders if he might catch her in the library later.

A shake of his head to clear his thoughts, and he turns his attentions to his mother, who is talking about some politics or another that his father will be dealing with later in the day. He does his best to engage her, but the thrum of mischief is already under his skin, and he’s _desperate_ to begin.

‘You look well,’ his mother interrupts herself, and lays a hand on his. ‘Please be sure to eat well today, and keep that colour in your cheeks.’

He waves her off, the way he always waves her off, with vague assurances and childish whining about being full-grown – he’s old enough to have sired children, and birthed them besides, and he doesn’t need her advice about his diet, not when Sigyn’s taken up that particular crusade, thank you – and she retreats to her previous topic.

Then, as breakfast is drawing to a close, people filtering out to begin their days of politicking and training and mischief, Theoric himself bursts through the doors, looking flushed and out of place, and there is something very subtly off about the whole thing. Sigyn looks at Loki sharpish, and he raises his eyebrows in innocence. She licks her lips, and he presses his tongue into his teeth at the memory of those lips, that tongue, and what they can do, before she affects an air of concern and rises to her feet, swishing over to her betrothed. They talk, and he’s animated, hands flailing. Loki remains looking at the back of Sigyn’s head, her braids messy and beautiful, rushed from a heavy sleep at his poetry the night before, aiming for innocent and mostly hitting it. She does not look back, but lays her hands upon her betrothed’s arms, and steers him to the table, where the seat next to hers has been cleared.

Loki looks across at Thor, who looks back at him with a slow smile. He raises a glass, and Loki raises his in turn.

Step one, it seems, is successful.

* * *

 

It goes on like this for weeks. Sigyn gives Loki a very stern look every time Theoric is late to breakfast, or to dine, or his patrols are changed without his knowledge, leaving him looking more a fool by the day. Thor does not take delight in embarrassing another man this way, but he plays his part, showing concern over the Crimson Hawk’s health and well-being, and making a not unsubtle remark as to his upcoming nuptials.

Theoric is happy to brag about his future wife, much to Sigyn’s growing chagrin. It seems more and more like Loki, for all _his_ bragging, is not going to be able to call a halt to it, and she grows more and more desperate any time he sneaks into her chambers, worried that this time might be the last. It never is, and he assures her that it won’t be the last, and to not panic, but a seamstress visits her about her wedding gown, and whether she would like a Vanir robe, or to wear the Asgardian gown. The panic it induces in her has her fleeing to the garden where she had first met the Prince all those years ago, and she hides among the flowers until he himself comes to find her.

‘What in the Realms are you doing hiding here?’ he chortles, because for all his gentleness, he finds great humour in other’s misery, even hers.

‘They’re talking about _dresses_ ,’ she gasps, and casts the most fleeting glances either side before grabbing his hair and dragging him in. ‘I don’t want to talk about _dresses_ ,’ she whispers.

Loki pulls his mouth free to take a closer look at their surroundings before shepherding her deeper into the gardens, to a quiet alcove with a bench and protection from tall, tall evergreens on all sides bar one. It’s the riskiest place they’ve ever been hand-in-hand together, and she is quite sure, as she fights his breeches in tandem with his squabbles with her gown, that he has cast no spell to turn eyes away from them. It’s quick, and dirty, and it does nothing to assuage her panic, but he whispers into her ear that he has it under control, that she doesn’t need to worry, she won’t be marrying Theoric, even if he has to cause a scene in the middle of the ceremony and curse them both.

Her nails score lines in the back of his neck as she shudders through her orgasm, and she sees those same scratches on his neck later at dinner, his hair ruffled enough to not hide them. She flushes horribly, and the lady next to her at the table asks if all is well.

‘I do not know,’ she admits, and tries not to stare at the Prince, who is doing a very good job of pretending to not be staring at her. ‘Perhaps.’

* * *

 

Sigyn is asleep when the door to her chambers is kicked clean off its hinges and it flies into the bookcase on the far wall. In an instant, she is on her feet, scrabbling for something to use as a weapon as the noise continues outside her bedroom. Only a few hours ago, she had loathed the presence of a sitting room, an extra few feet that separated her from her love, but now she is grateful for it, and rushes to brace the door with something, anything. She has a chair in here, next to the dresser, and she goes to jam it under the door handle when that door too flies off the hinges and she screams, scrambles back into a corner of the room.

‘There you are,’ coos a voice she feels like she should know.

It's monstrous, whatever it is, stalking toward her from the doorway. Her brain is working quickly, trying to remember spells but all she can think about is how Loki had drawn elhaz into the back of her neck when he thought she was asleep. Did he know this was coming? Who had even come?

As assassin, but why? What had she done?

And then, as she watches the figure draw a long dagger from its belt, she realises it’s not her at all. It’s about Loki.

‘Sigyn!’ Theoric yells, crashing through the wreckage, sword raised. ‘Fear not!’

Her eyes narrow at his presence in the room. How had he known? He did not patrol the West Wing but here he was.

He swings at the assassin, but the monster ducks the swing, and leans back against the returning swipe of Theoric’s sword. The boot heel the assassin drops into Theoric's chest sends him flying backwards, and he crashes through her desk, sending splinters and papers everywhere.

The assassin whirls back to face Sigyn.

'It’s nothing personal,’ it says to her, and she throws all of her might into the bottom of the candlestick she levels at its face.

With an easy wave of its arm, it deflects her attack, and tosses her across the room. The rune Loki had drawn does nothing to protect her, and she wheezes as she gets to her feet. Theoric is back, and nearly ends up gutted for his trouble, but he distracts the assassin long enough to give Sigyn time to escape.

Except there's no room for her to escape, given that the brawling men are blocking the only doorway, and the window is too high for her to jump out of. She throws it open anyway, and looks out. Considers her options. She is of Vanaheim, and the Vanir are not weak, not insubstantial. She could probably survive the drop, but she is a coward, and can’t bring herself to do it.

Behind her, a roar, and Theoric is thrown into the wall hard enough to dent it and rattle a painting free from its hook. She looks back, and swallows.

Sigyn doesn't know what to do. Theoric is not moving, and the assassin is faster than her indecisiveness, grabbing her around the waist and hauling her away from the window.

She kicks and screams and claws at the arm holding her hostage, but it takes no notice of her.

And then, like a particularly green and unhelpful saviour, Loki swings into view around the broken doorway. Literally swings, he has to hold onto the doorframe to stop himself skidding, and one foot leaves the tiles at the force of the stopping.

‘Put her down!’ he roars, daggers flashing into view, and the assassin laughs.

‘And here he is, the little prince here to defend his wife.’

Loki takes just two seconds to assess his options, and then leaps into battle, daggers twirling as he ducks and dives and slashes. Sigyn does her best to use the assassin’s distraction to break free, but his grip is unmoveable, and she is trapped until, out of nowhere, she too is thrown across the room. She hits the wall, face-first and feels the leaking in her nose before she’s even hit the floor. Dazed, she lies there, and does her best not to cry. It means she misses the fight, but she doesn’t think she minds; Loki’s yelling and hooting and hollering is a sound she is not comfortable with hearing in the way she’s hearing it, and finally, finally -

There’s a dull thump, and Loki crows victoriously before there’s a second thump.

She turns her head, and sees him, lying sprawled across the ruins of her sitting room, panting and bleeding and laughing.

Her nose is still bleeding, but she just sniffles and wipes the blood off onto her arm, more interested in getting the Prince onto his feet. Loki is heavy in her arms, his fingers clutching uselessly at her shoulders, but they manage to get his feet under him, and then his weight nearly topples them straight back over.

‘How,’ she grunts, bracing her feet to get him back onto his, ‘do you weigh so much, you don’t _eat_.’

He snorts, and leers at her, and if he wasn’t so injured, she might just shove him over and leave him on the floor. But stagger to her bed, they do, even though the sheets are ripped and there’s dust from the ceiling staining it grey, and they collapse onto it, a pile of limbs and defeated laughter.

For a moment or two they lie there, and then Sigyn worms her way free of his limbs and gets to her feet, just in time for Thor to barrel into the sitting room, hammer ready.

‘What happened?’ he booms, the way that Thor booms, and takes in what he can see.

‘I owe your brother a tremendous debt, dear Prince,’ she tells him, and Loki, still sprawled across the bed and heaving for breath, offers his brother a thumbs up.

Thor looks at Sigyn, and Sigyn looks at him, and then Theoric begins to stir, groaning and moaning and shuffling as he gets to his feet. Nobody offers to help him; Sigyn turns back to Loki to begin assessing the damage, and Thor takes an interest in the body of the assassin.

‘Sigyn,’ Theoric says, and she looks up from her perch next to the younger prince, his hand held in the palm of hers as her other hand brushes his hair back from his temple.

‘Theoric,’ she replies, with a nod of her head, and turns back to Loki, who coughs, pitifully.

Across the room, still squatting next to the assassin and poking at it with the end of a broken chair leg, Thor snorts.

The silence hangs and then is broken by the arrival of the King and Queen, who look flustered and confused and Frigga lets out a cry at the state of the rooms. She’s still trying to fasten the belt of her robe, and her fingers fumble as she takes it in fully.

‘Loki!’ she exclaims, and sweeps across the floor to where her son is trying his best to get onto his elbows.

‘No, no, my Prince,’ Sigyn breathes, hand on his shoulder to keep him flat, ‘just rest.’

‘What happened here?’ Odin demands, and steps over the rubble to better take it in. ‘An assassin? In our halls?’

‘It seems so, Father,’ Thor sighs, and gets to his feet. The assassin remains motionless. ‘His mask will not come off, so I do not think we’ll ever know who it was.’

He gives Loki a look that Sigyn catches, but does not understand. Loki snorts from the bed, and Frigga’s hands flutter over his head and shoulders, pressing gentle against his ribs.

‘For the best,’ Loki says, and then, ‘Mother, I’m fine. We’d be better off not knowing who it was, for my health’s sake.’

Thor stares at him. Loki stares at the ceiling. Odin realises that Theoric is stood there in the corner, trying to look small.

‘And you, boy,’ Odin starts, and Sigyn goes to get to her feet.

Loki grabs her wrist, implores with those hideously beautiful eyes of his for her to stay.

‘How did the assassin get past you? You are a Crimson Hawk, threats should not get beyond you! To have my son endanger himself on behalf of _your_ betrothed!’

‘Father,’ both Princes start, and Odin raises a hand to force them into silence.

‘I will not hear of it!’ he snaps, and they bow their heads. ‘You are to report to your barracks, Hawk, and I will decide what to do with you in the morning. Now leave.’

Theoric looks struck, and looks at Sigyn, who resolutely stares at nothing until he leaves, head down, and they can hear him clunking off down the corridor.

For several long, horrible moments, they stay there in silence.

‘Do try not to be harsh on the boy,’ Frigga starts, and Odin scoffs.

‘The betrothal will be cancelled,’ he says, and gives Sigyn a firm look, as though he expects her to defend her fiancé. ‘No Crimson Hawk unable to defend his wife is worthy of having one.’

‘I understand, my King,’ Sigyn replies, demure, nodding her head.

‘Father,’ Loki says, slow, aiming for silvery and missing, what with the wheeze in his lungs, ‘what of the Vanaheim – ‘

‘Enough, boy,’ Odin snaps, ‘we’ll discuss it further in the morning. I will find a more suitable husband for Sigyn then.’

‘What do we do of her chambers?’ Thor asks hurriedly, when Loki opens his mouth, looking at the ruined furniture and the general state of the floor, where there are blood splatters and the assassin’s body. ‘She cannot stay here.’

‘I believe there are guest chambers,’ Frigga says, ‘further down the wing, she can –‘

‘My antechambers are free,’ Loki gasps between breaths, forcing himself into a sitting position. He takes a second or two to pant, and then reaches an arm out for Thor, who comes to take it and get his brother on his feet.

‘Is that entirely _proper_ ,’ Frigga starts, but Loki coughs up a storm and cuts her off.

‘I would not be content of Lady Sigyn’s safety if she were anywhere else. You know my magic, Mother, and how nothing gets through my doors. She will be safe with me.’

Sigyn looks at him, and does her best not to blush at the look he returns to her. She does her best, but her ears still burn, visible beneath her dishevelled braid, and her cheeks follow soon after.

‘They are little more than an oversized closet,’ Loki says, apologetically, with a tilt of his head and his eyebrows knotting, ‘but we can have a bed made up, and your things brought through, just until these rooms are repaired.’

Sigyn looks at him and takes a deep breath. Her skin is buzzing, warmed and chilled and full of longing to feel his skin against it, but she keeps herself collected, and she tucks a foot to dip into a curtsey.

‘Thank you, my Prince,’ she says, ‘you are too kind.’

He looks tired now, genuinely so, beneath the bluster of feigning more injuries than he had, and his eyes are heavy, and his smile small, but he offers her the familiar smugness and barely-hidden lust she is so used to.

‘That’s settled then!’ Thor exclaims, making his brother, close to his ear as he is, wince. ‘I will take Loki to the infirmary, and then see about getting Sigyn’s things moved.’

‘Son,’ Odin says, and looks at Loki, and Sigyn, and then his wife. ‘Focus on a cot for the Lady first, her exhaustion is palpable. Her things can be moved in the morning.’

Thor flushes, and nods, gives his pardons to his mother, and leads his brother out.

‘You are a fool,’ he can be heard saying as they make their way down the corridor.

‘The things you do for love,’ Loki replies, before their voices disappear.

Sigyn is sure Loki is walking without aid, but she cannot stop herself from flushing darker at the last word. Loki is always sure to have it, no matter the conversation or argument, and he always makes it a choice word.

Odin is watching her, and she shakes herself out of her stupor to turn back to her dresser. Some of her clothes will need replacing, but she has spare nightgowns and small clothes, and a dress for the morning, and that is all she needs.

‘I will have a maid come to you,’ Frigga says, laying a gentle hand on her arm to still her movements. ‘She will run you a bath, and help you calm.’

‘I am calm, my Lady.’

‘Sigyn, you are covered in blood, and you have my son worried, do this thing for me.’

‘Yes, my Lady.’

* * *

 

There is no maid waiting for her outside Loki’s chambers, but the door is open, so she steps inside, only to have it swing shut behind her.

‘You aren’t funny,’ she calls, because he’s not. ‘You should be in the infirmary, not here.’

He appears in the doorway to his private bathroom, half-dressed and black and blue. But he’s smiling, and leaning against the door frame, and he looks wonderfully pleased with himself.

‘It was an easy deception. I traded in for a clone with my brother, they’ll find out in the morning, and hid myself behind an illusion of a maid. It’s child’s play, and you must think me a fool if you believe I will miss out an opportunity to help you bathe.’

‘Help me?’ she snorts, but lays her clothes down on the desk to go stand toe-to-toe with him.

His bare feet move on the heel, and his toes lay across hers, an oddly comforting gesture, even as the back of his fingers trace her cheek, and the smear of blood there.

‘You look like you need the bath more than I do.’

He glances over his shoulder, where the sound of running water is gentle and soothing, and then back at her.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘the bath tub is big enough for two.’

She lets out a huff of a laugh, disbelieving, and clutches his arms to rock up onto her toes to kiss his chin. It’s a difficult move, given that her feet are stuck beneath his, but she does it anyway, and grins when he ducks his head to kiss her properly.

‘Thank you,’ she whispers against his lips, ‘for coming to my rescue.’

‘Not exactly how I planned it,’ he admits, ‘I had intended to humiliate your betrothed, but not quite get so injured in the process.’

She snorts and shakes her head, and pries her feet free to take his hand and lead him into the bathroom proper.

His bath is indeed big enough for them both, comfortably so, and they relax, legs tangled, for several long minutes. Sigyn fiddles with her braid, tucking stray hairs back into it. Loki prods and pokes at his bruises, doing his best to heal them himself, and they say not a word. The water smells sweet, the oils soft against their skins, and the quiet plink of water dripping as they relax beats a steady rhythm to calm their hearts.

‘I was scared,’ she admits.

‘I want to tell you that you were never in any danger,’ he says, ‘but my plan did not go – according to plan.’

She frowns at him. ‘You brought an assassin to my door deliberately.’

‘Not quite,’ he hedges, and his eyes are dark through the steam. ‘I was going to create an illusion of one, send that coward to try and handle it, and then swoop in and save the day.’

‘But?’

‘It appears a real assassin made its way into the palace.’

She shakes her head in utter aplomb, and then laughs, rubs her face and gets the dried blood off.

‘I could have died,’ she says.

‘By the Nine, not at all,’ he snorts, waving a hand and shifting onto his aching knees to push hers apart and brush their noses together. ‘I would never see you hurt, my darling, not for all the riches of the Realms.’

‘Smooth talker.’

She’s grinning, though, and loops her arms around his neck.

He braces his hands on the edge of the tub, either side of her head, and rubs noses with her, shifting to rest his cheek against hers. The soft nip of his teeth against her ear makes her squeak and sigh, and she digs her nails into his nape.

‘I have the cot set up in my antechambers,’ he whispers, and his lips trail an inferno across her jaw and neck, ‘but I rather think you would be best off sleeping with me. For the sake of safety,’ he hurries to add, when her mouth opens to refute his request.

He has never slept in her bed, not past a light doze for a half-hour, but here he is, asking her to sleep with him, in his bed, for an entire night.

‘If my father has any wit,’ Loki continues, one hand leaving the edge of the tub to trace the curve of her body, the wet rise of her breast, the ridge of her ribs and the curve of her hip, fingertips like feathers against the crease of her thigh and down to the warmth between her legs, ‘he would have us engaged upon the morning, and what of propriety then?’

 She watches him, hungry and exhausted in the same measure, and curls her fingertips around the bath-damp ends of his hair. It needs a good wash, wet through with sweat and grey with dust as it is, but there will be time to bathe later. His fingers are wicked, and cool against her burning flesh.

‘We would never have a moment alone together,’ she laughs, and then clamps down on her lip to stop herself crying out when his fingers curl that way she hadn’t known she liked. ‘Your Mother knows you well enough to know not to trust you.’

‘Can we not speak of my Mother while I have my fingers inside you?’

His smile is beguiling, so beautiful and so poisonous, and her eyelashes flutter, her eyes falling shut as she arches her spine to bring her hips up closer to him.

‘Might we – move?’ she asks, and he bites a laugh into her collar.

‘No,’ he replies, smooth as can be, shifting his weight to push her higher, sliding his knees forward so she’s in his lap. ‘Here will do fine.’

‘The floor will get wet,’ she protests, because she always has to have something.

He straightens, admires the view of her wet and slick with the bath oil, and his hands run down her body, chasing the droplets rolling off her skin.

‘Then let it, it’s why I have maids.’

She studies his face then, weighs up the practicality against the expression in his eyes, and finally braces her feet, angling her hips. He hisses between his teeth, pulling her down against him and her head tips back, one hand moving to brace herself against the tub as the other tangles into his hair.

There isn’t much talking, because there is always a lull in the talking, Sigyn being too busy biting her lips, and Loki too busy mouthing at her collarbones, ensuring she won’t be showing off her décolletage for a few days. But that’s fine, they don’t need to talk, the splash of water over the edge of the tub and their heaving breaths is talk enough.

But they’re tired, and they have, potentially, the rest of their lives, so it’s over and done with soon enough, leaving them to bathe properly and retire to the bed. Sigyn almost lulls Loki into sleep, massaging his scalp as she washes the dust and sweat out of his hair, and he makes her shudder and whine when he runs a soap-slick cloth across her skin. Dried and dressed, they retire to the bed, and collapse beneath the sheets.

‘We’ll have to wake early,’ he hums, and Sigyn lifts her head from the soft cotton of the pillow.

‘Why?’ she asks, ‘have we not earned a rest?’

He grins, and leans his mouth to her ear to tell her about all the ways he intends to have her come the morning, leaving her shivering and grabbing a pillow to hit him with.

‘You’re cruel!’ she exclaims, and he just laughs and laughs.

* * *

 

In the morning Sigyn wakes to a maid shaking her shoulder. She’s in the cot in the antechambers, and Loki is nowhere to be seen.

‘Where is the Prince?’ she asks, and the maid bustles about getting things ready for her.

‘He was summoned early this morning, my Lady,’ she says, ‘his father the King wished to talk to him about the events of last night.’

At that, Sigyn flushes a deep scarlet, her cheeks burning like the Eternal Flame, and she dismisses the maid to let her dress in solitude. No doubt, there have been rumours a plenty about her sleeping here, she doesn’t need the evidence of the Prince all over her collar to become part of the downstairs talk, too.

As soon as she’s dressed, she heads for one of the antechambers, determined to seek out the King and see what he has in store for her, only to get stopped by Thor.

‘Ah, Sigyn, there you are, I was about to come to you. My Father wishes to see you.’

She nods, even though there is a part of her that feels very oddly cautious.

‘Sigyn,’ Odin says when she enters, demure and quiet and wide-eyed, behind the ever-confident Thor.

Loki is looking at his hands, resplendent in green and gold as always, looking confused and concerned and contemplative, and she takes a breath before taking the seat the King gestures at.

‘I have spoken with my son,’ he says, ‘about what happened last night.’

‘My Lord,’ she begins, and he raises a hand.

‘My dearest girl, you will not find yourself in trouble here. Indeed, you have found the opposite. It has come to light that my son harbours some – not inconsiderable – feelings for you, of a romantic nature.’

She licks her lips. ‘I had an inkling, My King.’

Loki gives her a withering look, and she chances a wink at him.

‘And you, my girl? What of your feelings?’

‘My own are – not inconsiderable.’

‘Then it is settled. You shall wed my son, Sigyn, and we shall have no more of this tomfoolery from the Crimson Hawks.’

‘What of Theoric, my Lord?’ she asks, ‘he is not a bad man.’

‘No, but he could not keep you safe, and in doing so led my son to injury. I have had him reassigned.’

‘Oh,’ she says, and looks at Loki, who offers her a vague shrug in return. ‘I understand, thank you, my King. Your offer is very generous.’

‘I know you have not spent much time together,’ he says, ‘but I am sure in time you can come to love one another, as I have my Queen.’

Sigyn does not dare tell him she has already fallen for his son, that she has lain with him and would bear him a child in time, when the Norns declared it to be time for such, and that she wants little more than to spend her life with him.

Instead, she agrees with him, and makes a joke she doesn’t remember about his mischievous nature being sure to make mornings interesting.

He makes an indignant noise and refuses to acknowledge her further.

* * *

 

Later, as they walk back to his chambers, hers halfway repaired already, he takes her hand and pulls her a stop.

‘We never fucked in the library,’ he says, and she takes a second to process it before howling with laughter.

‘That was unexpected,’ she says.

‘And not what I meant to say at all,’ he says, by way of apology. ‘I meant to ask you what, exactly, your opinion of dresses were now. You had been so panicked at the thought of them not a fortnight ago.’

She eyes him up and down, lingers on his crotch.

‘I am more concerned with your time-keeping,’ she admits, going for a leer and missing, too used to honest want and need to play it up. ‘I am to be married soon, in case you haven’t heard, and I worry that you might be late.’

‘I am never late,’ he says, sticks his nose in the air.

‘No?’ she asks, and breaks her hand free. ‘Then I shall race you, and we will see who is late then!’

She levels a kick at his backside for good measure before hiking her skirts and rushing off down the corridor. He lets her get to the end before he gives chase.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I might write more of these two, I'm really enjoying writing them, but only if yall want to see more of it.


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